Dianne Bourne talks to the TV show’s judge Mary Berry about the resurgence of home baking as she prepares to showcase her skills at The Cake International show in Manchester this weekend

Mary Berry, with two of her creations - the plum pie (left) and chocolate fondants

Cake baker extraordinaire Mary Berry is pondering what delectable recipes she will be cooking up here in Manchester on Friday.

“I think I’ll make some banoffee pies,” she ponders. “Or maybe I’ll do a pear and lemon tart. I haven’t quite worked it out just yet.

“Most people want cakes from me that aren’t complicated – they want to cook the classic Victoria sandwich. They don’t want recipes that require special tins or difficult techniques and I can quite understand that.”

But of course, Mary has a back catalogue of cake recipes dating back decades to dip in and out of to wow us all with here at the Cake International exhibition over at Event City on Friday.

Mary has published more than 70 cookery books and sold over 5m since her first tome back in 1970.

But it’s since becoming a prime-time TV star in hit BBC show The Great British Bake Off that Mary has also become at the ripe old age of 77 a showbiz star, a red carpet regular and even a style icon.

So what does she make of her new-found celeb status?

She beams: “Oh, it’s lovely. People are terribly friendly, and when they come and tap my shoulder in the supermarket and tell me how they’ve made my lemon drizzle cake, I think it’s wonderful.

“The Great British Bake Off had over 6m viewers, it’s really great that people are so interested in baking.”

For Mary, the resurgence in home-baking is a great thing for all the family to get involved in.

She says: “It’s something to do with your children, to entertain at tea time.

“And whenever you make something yourself, people are always oohing and ahhing about how good it is. The feeling of putting something home-made into your children’s lunchboxes, it’s very rewarding, and I know it’s not only the mums but the dads too who are getting involved.”

According to research by the organisers of the upcoming Cake International show, 9 out of 10 women now home bake, compared to 7 out of 10 men.

Mary reckons that the further north she travels, the more interested in home-baking people tend to be, so she is particularly looking forward to heading here on Friday.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty keeping Mary busy away from her kitchen. She’s planning another cookery book, as well as writing her autobiography, as well as a new series of the Great British Bake Off to look forward to.

She says: “There were three men in the final last year [won by Manchester’s own John Whaite] and that shows how fair it is. I mean, can you imagine, would I really want three men in the final? That shows it really is purely down to the standard of the baking, no one interferes with the result.”

Mary says there’s been more than 11,000 entries for the new series, so we can bet its going to be more competitive than ever.

But with the prospect of so many tantalising delicacies to sample, we have to ask, how on earth does Mary maintain such an enviably slim figure?

She says: “It’s terribly important for me to taste everybody’s baking when I’m judging these things, and I always do that.

“But it just means I’m pretty careful at lunchtimes, I just have a bowl of soup.

“If you have a treacle pudding one day, then don’t have it the next, it seems pretty simple to me.

“And I really believe that one should always share, don’t you? Have a small slice and enjoy it is what I say.”

On that, we can all agree.

» Mary Berry appears at Cake International – the sugarcraft, cake decorating and baking show which runs from March 8-10 at Event City, Trafford Centre. For tickets see cakeinternational.co.uk

Want to bake like Mary? Here’s two exclusive recipes from her new cookbook, Mary Berry at Home.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/Gas 6. You will need a two-litre (three½-pint) pie dish.

To make the pastry, measure the flour into a mixing bowl. Using a coarse grater, grate half the butter into the bowl. Using your fingers, flick over some of the flour to cover the butter. Grate in the remaining butter, coat with more flour, then grate in the lard. Using your fingers, coat the fat with flour. Add enough water to bring together and then knead to form a ball. Roll out the pastry on a floured work surface to about 12cm by 30cm. Fold the top half of the pastry into the middle and the bottom half over the top. Turn the pastry 45 degrees so it looks like a book. Reroll out and fold as before.

Rest in the fridge for 15 minutes. Repeat this process two more times until the pastry has a total of four rolls and folds. Slice each plum in half and remove the stone, then tip into a bowl. Mix the sugar and the cornflour together, then add to the plums and toss together. Spoon into the dish and place a pie funnel in the middle.

Roll out the pastry slightly larger than the top of the dish. Wet the lip of the dish and cut strips of pastry to lay all around the lip. Wet these and place the large piece of pastry on top, pushing down to seal the edges and making sure the pie funnel is poking through the middle of the pastry. Knock up the edges using the back of a knife. Brush the top of the pastry with beaten egg. Bake for 55 minutes to one hour, until golden and crisp.

You will need eight metal dariole moulds, or ramekins, greased with butter. Add the chopped chocolate to a bowl, along with the butter and sit over a pan of just hot water. Leave to melt, stirring occasionally, then set aside to cool a little. Measure the caster sugar and eggs into a bowl and whisk using an electric hand whisk until pale, light and thick and the mixture leaves an impression when the whisks are lifted out.

Fold the melted chocolate into the egg mixture, sieve in the cocoa powder and carefully cut and fold until smooth – be careful not to beat otherwise it will lose its air. Spoon into the prepared moulds. Sit on a baking sheet and bake for eight–10 minutes until well risen and firm around the edges.

To make the sauce, break the chocolate into a bowl, add the cream, and sit over a pan of simmering water until the chocolate has melted. Stir until smooth. Run a palette knife around the chocolate puddings and tip out of the moulds on to plates. Pour over the sauce and serve.

» Extracted from Mary Berry at Home by Mary Berry and Lucy Young, (BBC Books, £20).

Our newspapers include the flagship Manchester Evening News - Britain's largest circulating
regional daily with up to 130,485 copies - as well as 20 local weekly titles across Greater
Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire.

Free morning newspaper, The Metro, published every weekday, is also part of our portfolio,
delivering more than 200,000 readers in Greater Manchester.

Greater Manchester Business Week is the region’s number one provider of business news andfeatures, targeting a bespoke business audience with 12,687 copies every Thursday.

Every month, M.E.N. Media’s print products reach 2.2 million adults, spanning from Accrington
in the north to Macclesfield in the south.